Book info

• Title The Appeal
• Author John Grisham
• Year 2008
• Genre Thriller

Money can buy you anything. Even a verdict. In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a chemical company is declared guilty of dumping toxic waste into a small town's water supply, causing the worst 'cancer cluster' in history. Their only avenue is to appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will either approve the verdict or reverse it. The company's owner wants a seat on the Court. His political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mould him into a potential Supreme Court justice. Their Supreme Court justice. And unless their scheme is exposed, the polluters will make a clean escape.

Thoughts

You never quite know what you’re going to get with a more recent John Grisham thriller - they’re always written in a certain style that really appeals to me, but it can approach any aspect of the legal world and dip into the murky worlds within. At first, I thought this one was going to be pretty dull - a lot of people prancing around each other and far too much politics for me to follow… but it gradually started coming together, and I found it really interesting once our new supreme justice had to face the consequences or realities of his own previous decisions. Interesting stuff.

Rating: 3 / 5